Candidates spar over former Hamilton mayor before fall campaign

The two mayoral candidates in Hamilton are fighting over their predecessor — whether he is relevant in the election and, if so, how much — though voters don’t cast their ballots for nine more months.

Mayor Kelly Yaede, in her State of the Township speech last week, staked out her position: former Mayor John Bencivengo and his federal corruption convictions are in the past and should stay there.

“It makes me angry when the collective actions of a few individuals have given Hamilton a collective black eye,” she said last Tuesday. “But it makes me even angrier when others solely for their own personal political agenda seek only to deepen the wound that has been inflicted on Hamilton Township rather than to help our community and guide our residents forward.”

The sole Democrat vying to challenge her in the fall, Barbara Plumeri, has, since announcing her candidacy, tried to make the conversation about Bencivengo and its fallout.

In December, Plumeri called for an additional mandatory ethics pledge for township employees. In February, she criticized Yaede’s administration for using the accounting firm Hodulik and Morrison, a contractor used during the Bencivengo administration.

“A new era should include an ethics board. After all this township has been through this past year the township should have a local ethics board,” she said.

Though it is still months before the bulk of campaigning begins, the conversation about the ousted mayor still seems to matter. How the two women position themselves on Bencivengo and other issues could matter less than the candidates themselves though, said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rutgers University.

“Who wins in those elections involves any number of factors, not the least of which is the specific personalities involved,” he said.

After scandals, such as the one that ousted Bencivengo, both parties tend to run on a “clean slate” — the idea that they will clean up the government if voters trust them at the ballot box, he said. But their success, or failure, can be greatly effected by the personal networks of the candidates and their campaigns.

“It’s not clear that one party has an advantage in that situation,” he said. “Local politics is driven by personalities.”

Bencivengo was convicted last November of five federal charges related to the school board corruption case against him. Marliese Ljuba, the government’s cooperating witness in the case, testified she bribed him with $12,400 in exchange for his influence with members of the Hamilton Board of Education.

Bencivengo resigned after his conviction, and the township council selected Yaede from her position as Council vice president to fill in as mayor for a year. Whoever wins the fall election will serve until the end of Bencivengo’s term, 2015.

Though the case against Bencivengo focused on the school board, its fallout has reached the township, including the former Director of Community Planning and Compliance, Rob Warney. Warney plead guilty to one charge of money laundering in the case for taking a check from Ljuba and distributing the money to Bencivengo.

The testimony in the case has resulted in a flurry of rumors, accusations and talk of a “cloud” over the township that have not yet dissipated. Township elected and appointed officials have made it clear they want to move past the scandal.

Both parties will soon hold their conventions to determine who will officially be running in November. The Democratic party holds theirs on Feb. 23.